Ballpoint pens…the ruin of education in our country

After writ­ing my last post, I recalled an excerpt from a book that I had recently read. I dug through the book today and located the sec­tion that I had pre­vi­ously found so humor­ous. (I need all the humor I can get this week since I’m not in beau­ti­ful San Diego attend­ing ISTE with friends and col­leagues!) The fol­low­ing list can be found in Rethink­ing Edu­ca­tion in the Age of Tech­nol­ogy by Collins and Halver­son (pg. 30). Their list high­lights the many exam­ples of how edu­ca­tion has been very resis­tant to change.

From a principal’s pub­li­ca­tion in 1815: “Stu­dents today depend on paper too much. They don’t know how to write on a slate with­out get­ting chalk dust all over them­selves. They can’t clean a slate prop­erly. What will they do when they run out of paper?”

From the jour­nal of the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Teach­ers, 1907: “Stu­dents today depend too much upon ink. They don’t know how to use a pen knife to sharpen a pen­cil. Pen and ink will never replace the pencil.”

From Rural Amer­i­can Teacher, 1928: “Stu­dents today depend upon store bought ink. They don’t know how to make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words or ciphers until their next trip to the set­tle­ment. This is a sad com­men­tary on mod­ern education.”

From Fed­eral Teach­ers, 1950: “Ball­point pens will be the ruin of edu­ca­tion in our coun­try. Stu­dents use these devices and then throw them away. The Amer­i­can val­ues of thrift and fru­gal­ity are being dis­carded. Busi­nesses and banks will never allow such expen­sive luxuries.”

From a sci­ence fair judge in Apple Class­room of Tomor­row chron­i­cles, 1988: “Com­put­ers give stu­dents an unfair advan­tage. There­fore, stu­dents who used com­put­ers to ana­lyze data or cre­ate dis­plays will be elim­i­nated from the sci­ence fair.”

Photo credit: San­dor on Flickr

I read this list and won­der how future edu­ca­tors will view our resis­tance to change. How will they view our adher­ence to seat time rather than com­pe­tency based instruc­tion? How will they view our rigid school sched­ule? How will they view our assess­ment sys­tem that uses let­ter grades? This list could go on and on, but it becomes evi­dent quickly when reflect­ing on our sys­tem that we do many things that don’t make much sense other than to stay in line with the cur­rent system.

So true! I actu­ally have col­leagues who chas­tised me for adopt­ing an elec­tronic grade book with­out ade­quately protest­ing, through the union, this undue “change in work­ing con­di­tions”! My reply? Why would I com­plain about a change for the better?.

I was not allowed to use a car­tridge pen in Year 5. Our teacher insisted we use foun­tain pens as the fill­ing and main­te­nance of a foun­tain pen was a nec­es­sary life skill (which I have long since for­got­ten but guess could relearn pretty quickly should the need arise)

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I cer­tainly haven’t went back to check the pri­mary sources of these quotes, but I do have a great deal of respect for the authors of the book. Dr. Halver­son and Dr. Collins are both EXTREMELY well respected fac­ulty mem­bers at top uni­ver­si­ties. These quotes are also to other sim­i­lar quotes about tech­nol­ogy that I have pre­vi­ously read. They seem silly to us when we look back on them, but they weren’t so strange at the time they were made. Any­thing in par­tic­u­lar that makes you think they are fake?

Just a com­ment in a slightly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. I do hate cheap ball point pens because they need a lot of pres­sure to write. As some­one with ter­ri­ble hand­writ­ing (thank you Catholic school) but who can let­ter quite well with a nib type pen, I do regard the cheap ball point pen as a hor­ri­ble inven­tion. At age 61 with a bit of arthri­tis, the cheap pen is the death of legibility.